Pam, Tim and CBS

04Feb10

Recap: CBS is airing an ad during the Superbowl featuring star college quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam, discussing how Pam chose to carry Tim to term instead of having a doctor-suggested abortion. IIRC, the commercial is sponsored by Focus on the Family and is supposed to inspire us all to criminalize abortion.

First: I have no trouble whatsoever with Pam and Tim telling their story. The kernel of it is “Pam chose to carry her son to term.” The verb in that sentence is chose. Like most pro-choicers, I am pro-choice. (Fancy that.)

Second: The problem I DO have is the use of “Pam chose to carry her son to term” as an anti-choice message. Pam’s not just telling her story, here: she’s telling it as a way to sell to the country the idea that other women should be required to carry their fetuses to term; crucially, that other women should not have the same choice Pam had. That is, to put it kindly, bullshit.

(Additionally, the implied message that every woman who chooses life will produce the finest quarterback ever to breathe Floridian air is silly. Of no real consequence, but silly.)

Third: I do not wholly buy CBS’s reasoning for allowing this particular political ad when they have not allowed political ads in the past. According to NPR, CBS is allowing this one because they could afford to turn away all political ads in past years, but cannot this year due to the economy. Really? CBS couldn’t find ONE MORE advertiser to take the Pam/Tim slot? Smells fishy to me.

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We’ll Talk About DADT, But It Won’t Make You Equal

02Feb10

Congress and/or the DOD are holding hearings today to determine whether and to what extent to repeal DADT. Among Congress’s concerns are whether to require all servicemembers to disclose their orientation and whether to extend healthcare and other benefits to same-sex partners. Which sounds like business as usual in Washington, only with a good-doobie progressive-thinking sort of twist. Right?

…Except that the very fact that this hearing is being held says that Congress has no intention of allowing GLBT soldiers to serve as anything but second-class citizens.

Because it’s really very simple. If you believe non-heterosexual soldiers should serve their country on the same footing as heterosexual soldiers, you repeal DADT wholesale. You give everyone the same benefits and the same treatment, no matter who’s which is going in who’s what. Simple. Problem solved.

The fact that Congress is spending taxpayer dollars on debating on what terms GLBT soldiers should be allowed to serve in the armed forces says flat out that Congress has already decided those terms will not be equal. GLBT soldiers will remain second-class citizens; now Congress just has to fight over how much second-classness they’ll be subjected to.

Not only am I totally gobsmacked by the obvious disparate treatment going on here, I’m also shocked that Congress is not the least bit ashamed of it. If they were, they’d find a way to keep it out of the news. Yet they’re not. In fact, they’re crowing about it. And we’re all supposed to believe this is the cookie Obama promised during his campaign. Don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining.

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“Liveblogging” the State of the Union Address

28Jan10

20:57: State of the Union is on every channel except WXSP, which is showing reruns of something called “The Unit.” Guess I can choose my own talking heads.
21:00: Congressman Joe Wilson is warming up in the back.
21:01: PBS is still extolling its sponsors. Commercials? On MY PBS? It’s more common than you think.
21:03: I have no idea who Jim Lehrer’s talking heads are, but they sound much less pompous and annoying than NBC’s talking heads.
21:04: You know who I miss? Molly Ivins.
21:06: HAIL TO THE CHIEF, HE’S THE ONE WE ALL SAY “HAIL” TO.
21:06: Mosh!Pit!Obama!
21:07: Jim Lehrer just referred to Jill Biden as the “Second Lady.”
21:08: Jim says Tim Geithner “had a bad week.” Yeah, you could call it that.
21:09: Nancy Pelosi WANTS THE CLAPPING TO STOP.
21:11: And Michelle Obama is, apparently, “Lady Obama.” SWEET.
21:11: GO SPEECH GO! Obama kicks off with a Constitutional history lesson. Is this going to be on the exam?
21:12: Joe Biden looks like he’s going to cry, as Obama discusses the great trials facing our nation and answering history’s nature’s call. Or something.
21:13: “The economists told you this shit would happen. You did not listen. EVERYONE IS OUT OF WORK. YOUR HOUSES HAVE BURNED DOWN. SMALL TOWNS ARE NOW HAITI. DOOM AND SO FORTH.”
21:14: Obama reads children’s letters at night. What is he, Santa Claus?
21:15: “Wall Street sucks. Main Street sucks. Partisanship sucks. Challenges suck. Americans want shiny objects and for Congress to FUCKING DO SOMETHING.”
21:17: Obama has never been more hopeful about America’s future. That makes one of us….
21:18: Step One: the economy. Everybody hated the bank bailout, which was like getting a root canal from Tim Geithner. Obama: “WE MADE YOU A BAILOUT BUT YOU EATED IT.”
21:21: Obama announces cutting taxes for everyone except your mother-in-law. Congress is happy.
21:22: “We haven’t raised income taxes by a single dime on a single person.” Not even those who could afford it, mind you.
21:23: Obama mentions the stimulus bill. John McCain looks like he suddenly lost control of his bladder.
21:24: Joe Biden is going to cry. Joe Liberman is going to fall asleep.
21:24: Obama: “I CAN HAS JOBS BILL?”
21:25: Thanks to all the standing ovations, Congress has to stand up and sit down during the State of the Union more often than a Muslim prayer service. (Or a Catholic mass. I dunno, which is funnier?)
21:26: Obama: “EXTEND CREDIT TO SMALL BIZNIZ YOUSE BASEMENT CATS.”
21:27: Our nation is going to build the infrastructure of Tomorrowland, which will be made entirely out of plastic and have a robot butler, also made entirely out of plastic. The plastics company will get tax credits and also stimulus money. The robot butler will get deported.
21:28: Justice Kennedy may be already dead.
21:30: Obama wants to change the world, then buy it a Coke and keep it company. And blow housing bubbles. Wait! No! He wants to catch up with China!
21:32: Obama: “AMERICA NO CAN HAS SECOND PLACE!”
21:33: Senator Chris Dodd really shouldn’t have had that second enchilada.
21:35: Obama: “I CAN HAS CLIMATE BILL?” Pelosi: “ITTEH BITTEH CLIMATE BILL COMMITTEH!”
21:36: “The nation that leads the clean energy economy will be China.” Wait, no – “will be the leader of the world economy.” But I repeat myself.
21:37: Make the Chinese buy OUR cheap plastic crap instead of the other way round! That will totally solve it! Wait, what was the problem again?
21:38: Joe Biden wonders why anyone bothered to give him a chair.
21:39: Obama: “Remember when we invested in America’s children? Big mistake.”
21:40: Obama: “Children should stay in school and study hard!” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan: “BOO STFU COMMIE.”
21:41: “In today’s economy, a high school diploma no longer guarantees a good job.” I think you can take “good” out of that sentence, d00d….
21:42: “In the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.”
21:43: You know, when I’m trying to decide whether to buy food, medicine, or electricity, I TOTALLY think about those family tax credits I’m going to get. TOTALLY. ALL THE TIME. Sarcastic Cat is sarcastic.
21:44: Obama: “HEALTH CARE NAO!”
21:45: Michelle Obama: “Did you really have to mention me? Now everyone’s looking. Um, hi, everyone. Hi. Fuckoff.”
21:48: Obama: “IF YOU HAS BETTER HEALTH PLAN, BRING IT.”
21:49: Obama: “CLINTON MADE YOU A SURPLUS, BUT BUSH EATED IT.”
21:50: John McCain: “If I had been President, the deficit would have magically vanished before I took office.”
21:51: Obama: “I will bring my leftist socialtopia vision to fruition by implementing a rightist spending freeze that will freeze spending on anything that is not a frivolous war on unwinnable terrain. This will totally work because I AM CEILING CAT.”
21:53: Nancy Pelosi: “I wonder if the President realizes he’s wearing a ‘kick me’ sign?”
21:54: Obama: “NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA PAY GO PAY GO NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA.”
21:55 Obama: “The spending freeze will come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be a spending freeze.”
21:56: Obama: “Let’s try common sense! It is delicious!”
21:57: Obama wants much tighter controls on lobbyists and special interests; did not think Citizens United was a particularly good idea. Justice Ginsburg is clearly propped up on her own gavel.
21:59: Obama didn’t think his election would “usher in peace and harmony and a bipartisan era.” Unfortunately, he forgot to mention this to a metric crapton of his followers. (The latest issue of The Nation is devoted entirely to this little problem.)
22:01: Obama makes an oblique reference to Sotomayor’s kabuki nomination.
22:02: There are A LOT of ugly old white men in suits in this room. Like, way more than there are in the general population. Just sayin.
22:03: Obama is too young to want to continue Congress’s endless referendum on the 1960s. It is, like, totally boring.
22:04: Band Name of the Day: Al-Qaeda Spiders.
22:05: Obama: End the unwinnable fuckall-expensive war! …in 2011. Maybe. Not in Afghanistan.
22:07: Senator Joe Liberman: “Wait, why am I standing again?”
22:08: Obama: “SUPPORT OUR TROOPS.” Congress: *clap clap clap stand stand clap clap stand clap*
22:09: The greatest threat to the American people is the threat of nuclear weapons. Not nuclear weapons themselves, mind you. Just the threat of them.
22:10: We’re going to “secure all vulnerable nuclear weapons around the world within four years,” yet the U.S.’s chemical weapons arsenal in Kentucky, which was supposed to be decommissioned by the end of this year, is going to be around until at least 2021 even on an “accelerated” decommissioning schedule. WTF? Really?
22:10: Science and technology education will redeem those backwards Muslims! Totally! I mean, hell, it’s not like they invented our number system, or anything. …wait…
22:11: Soon Haiti will be more delicious than ever!
22:12: We support the human rights of women marching in Iran and Afghanistan…but not of women in our own country. American is “on the side of freedom and dignity” as long as we don’t actually have to *do* anything about it.
22:13: “If you adhere to our common values, you should be treated no differently than anyone else.” Us pinko hippie liberals, however, can suck it.
22:14: Obama: “I WILL TOTALLY REPEAL DADT.” About fucking time, you slack bastard!
22:14: Obama: “EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK.” I’ll believe it when I see it.
22:14: Obama: “STRENGTHEN OUR BORDERS.” Which of these things is not like the other…?
22:17: Insert several minutes of rhetoric here.
22:18: Patrick Kennedy just realized he left the stove on.
22:20: CARRY THE DREAM. Lift that barge, tote that bale, the torch has been passed to a day that shall live in infamy fourscore and seven years ago. And so forth.

Screw the Republican response. I’m going to bed.

Sen. John Kyl was on NPR this morning WHIIIINING about how they really do do stuff and Obama was MEEEEEN to suggest otherwise. He wants a COOOOOKIE MOOOOOOM…

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Probability Theory, Intelligent Design, and the Monty Hall Problem

27Dec09

I think I have just eaten Dembski’s probabilitistic lunch, but I need someone who knows more about probability theory than I do to check my work.

I will try to explain in a way normal mortals can understand.

In his book on intelligent design, Dembski argues, among other things, that certain biological structures cannot have happened by chance because the probability that they would appear by chance in nature (presumably, he means “at all anywhere ever”) is less than 1 in 10^150. (I have issues with how he got this number that are too complicated to go into here*, so for the sake of this argument, we’ll go with 1 in 10^150.)

My first instinct was that this was wrong, because it overlooks that certain structures are meaningful to us.

A very simple illustration: say you can make a protein from a series of building blocks, which are chosen by random flips of a coin. Dembski argues, for example, that HTTHTHTHTHTHTHHHTHTH could not occur randomly in nature because the chances of that sequence happening randomly in nature fall below 1 in 10^150. (This is just an illustration; I haven’t even tried to do the math to demonstrate the probability of flipping HTTHTHTHTHTHTHHHTHTH. My excuse is that Dembski doesn’t do it either.) My first problem with this is that we only give a shit about HTTHTHTHTHTHTHHHTHTH in the first place because it is meaningful to us; the probability of hitting HTTHTHTHTHTHTHHHTHTH on the first try** is susceptible to the position of the observer (us) as to whether HTTHTHTHTHTHTHHHTHTH is significant.

I had absolutely no way of articulating this until I remembered the Monty Hall Problem. The Monty Hall Problem (you may remember this from some recent movie with math geeks in it; I know I saw it there but I can’t remember which movie – I’m thinking either 21 or Good Will Hunting) goes like this:

Imagine you are on a game show. The point of the game show is to win a car. In front of you are three doors, marked 1, 2, and 3, which are closed. You know there is a car behind one door and goats behind the other two doors.

The host (who knows what is behind each door) asks you to pick a door. For illustration, you pick Door No. 1. The host then opens Door No. 2 and shows you the goat behind it. Then, the host asks if you want to keep Door No. 1 or switch to Door No. 3. What do you do?

The answer, counterintuitively, is that you switch. Because if you switch, you have a 2 in 3 chance of winning the car, whereas if you stick, your chance of winning is only 1 in 3. It’s counterintuitive because, once you know what is behind Door No. 2, you’d think your chance of winning the car is only 50/50: after all, there are only two closed doors left, and you know that one door is car and the other is goat.

But what skews the odds is not that you don’t know what’s behind 1 or 3, but that the host does, and more importantly, that the host did not show you the car. The probability that you’ll win the car has changed not because the numbers have, but because of the influence of the host’s knowledge on the numbers.

To maybe make it clearer: say that, instead of three doors, there are a hundred doors. You pick Door No. 1, and the host opens all the other doors *except* Door No. 49. You’d switch, instantly, because it’s obvious the host knows something you don’t about about Door No. 49 – say, that there’s a car behind it. (Yes, it is possible that the host picked No. 49 arbitrarily and you had the car in the first place. It’s also true that, in the original problem, the host picked No. 2 arbitrarily and you had the car in the first place. That’s why your chance of winning if you switch is only 2 in 3, not 3 in 3.)

Dembski’s argument is predicated on the idea that all possible combinations (say, of proteins) are equally likely, and that therefore any one of the equally-likely combinations cannot have happened by chance. But (overlooking the vast array of external pressures for the moment, because Dembski does) the combinations aren’t all equally likely. Like the host, we’ve eliminated a huge number of zonk combinations because we know they do not work. And our chances of landing on the few that do work thus increase. I haven’t crunched the numbers, but I would bet they increase well over Dembski’s “probabilitistic threshold” of 1 in 10^150.

That’s as clear as I can make it right now, unfortunately.

And of course, even if this flaw exists, the entire notion of “design theory” suffers from another a priori flaw that renders this one moot: it unnecessarily compounds the postulate. There is simply no need to postulate a Creator Intelligence, Dembski’s “probabilitistic threshold” notwithstanding. What’s hilarious is that Dembski even admits as much, albeit not in so many words.

*Dembski comes up with 1 in 10^150 by multiplying the estimated number of elementary particles in the universe by the estimated number of units of Planck time that have passed since the universe began. I still suspect that anything that could occur beneath a threshold consisting of the smallest possible bit of matter multiplied by the smallest measurable unit of time could not “occur” in any meaningful sense at all, but I have no way of demonstrating it just yet.

**Dembski does seem to think we ought to hit on a working biological structure on the first try, or never. I also think he’s wrong about this because he fails to account for the amount of time available for biological structures to respond to adaptive and other pressures.

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Expatriates from Venus!

23Dec09

or, “A Christmas Tale”

Deadlines are looming, so I am trying to churn out a few more pieces of creative nonfiction what I think are not total crap.

Today, I started on one about how we will not be terraforming Mars anytime soon, which segued nicely into a story about the guy I once dated who seriously believed human beings had migrated to Earth from Venus after turning Venus into a pollutionary hellhole. According to him, all our Venusian spacefaring equipment sunk somewhere as the Lost Island of Atlantis. Also, Venus is the astrological planet of love because we all have a cuddly vestigial memory of when Venus was our Mother Planet, which thus affects our birth charts for some reason.

I am not making this up.

Oh, and we forgot to tell our kids about our origins because we were too busy surviving. Not for nothing, but if I had EMIGRATED FROM ANOTHER PLANET, I think I might tell my kids. Maybe.

This is the same guy who first told me global warming was no biggie, we’d just move to Mars and terraform that (he was sure we could do this because we had already emigrated from Venus, natch). Never mind that Mars has insufficient gravity to hold in greenhouse gases even if we COULD send living people there with enough machinery to start manufacturing said gases in large quantities, or that Mars’s atmosphere is something like 95% CO2 anyway so it’s not like Mars needs MORE of it.

Also, never mind that this guy wanted to be an astronaut and still lists “astronomy” as a hobby. He also thought Piltdown Man was real, which tells you something. (I regret now that I never asked him how Piltdown Man figured into his “we’re from Venus” theory. Does he perhaps think the “humans” who built sulfuric-acid-proof spaceships and emigrated from twenty-five MILLION miles away were Australopithecines? LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS! FOR SRS GUISE!)

Otherwise, this guy was totally able to function in the real world and even graduate a decent school with some kind of engineering degree. I am not making this up either.

Suddenly, three wise men and a virgin birth seem totally plausible. Merry Christmas.

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Bob Dylan, World News, and the Argument from Design

12Dec09

Bob Dylan claims to have made a Christmas album. I submit that it is not possible for Bob Dylan to make a Christmas album, because the lyrics of Christmas songs are so familiar as to be decipherable by just about everyone, and any song with decipherable lyrics is by definition not a Bob Dylan song.

Any moment now someone is going to “discover” the Christmas album Kurt Cobain never released. Probably in the same box with L. Ron Hubbard’s “latest book.”

In case you’re into evolution, or just want to smack fundies who say things like “but the eye! The eye can’t have evolved from anything! The eye is perfect just as it is! Even Darwin could not explain the eye!”, read Andrew Parker’s In the Blink of an Eye, in which he explains not only the evolution of the eye from a spot of light-sensitive cells, but also explains the entire Cambrian explosion therefrom.

It’s not particularly well-written – he’s one of those who leaves his thesis until *after* he’s explained it and also thinks “orientate” is a word – but his solution is elegant and so wonderfully self-evident one wonders why Darwin *didn’t* think of it. (Answer: Darwin was into earthworms and finches, not things what live in the dark underwater. Also, Darwin predated the discovery of the Burgess Shale.)

NBC Nightly News-Flavored Pablum last night had a piece on how rising sea levels due to global warming are drowning Bangladeshis out of their homes and farms and driving half a million of them a year to the capital, where they’re mostly dying in the slums. This was followed immediately by a story on how the CEO of Virgin is building private-use spacefaring vehicles so rich weirdos can be blasted into the upper atmosphere and “experience how fragile the Earth is.”

You want to experience how fragile the Earth is? GO TO BANGLADESH WHY DON’T YOU.

I had really hoped NBC Nightly Blech couldn’t get any weirder than that, but then I watched the following night, in which I learned that President Obama had proposed helping out small business with some of the leftover, un-spent TARP FUNDS, and the Republicans – the small-business-promoting, Joe-the-Plumber-loving Republicans….

…said no.

No, said the Republicans. No, we will not take this money we were going to spend on this other thing but we ended up not having to spend it on that and use it to fund small businesses instead. Even though we say we love small business and totally want them to keep voting for us. We do totally still love them, just not enough to give them any money.

Why do Republicans hate Joe the Plumber?

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Kalamazoo Passes Non-Discrimination Ordinance; Opponents Still Whiny

07Nov09

Kalamazoo’s non-discrimination-ordinance amendment passed yesterday by a 2 to 1 vote. (I could not vote for it on account of not living in the city proper.) The ordinance bans discrimination in housing and public accommodations based on real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

I actually first learned of this proposed ordinance AND became a supporter of it when I saw an appallingly transphobic and fearmongering poster put out by the “Vote No” side. It featured “mug shots” of men-dressed-as-women (whether they were actually transgendered, transvestites, or just dressed up for the fearmongering poster, I have no idea) and tales of how these men had been, or were going to be, peeping at women in a restroom near you.

I said, “I have no idea what this ordinance says or what it’s even about, but I would vote “Yes” on it just because this poster is such an appalling piece of bullshit that I can’t bear to be even tenuously affiliated with whatever hateful asshats produced it. Thanks, poster!”

…Then I learned I’m not in the city and so could only vote on the much less interesting (but, sadly, equally controversial) public transportation millage. Egh.

I still have no idea what the “Vote No” position was, exactly. A few weeks before voting day, signs started going up in local front yards reading “NO Discrimination – Vote NO on Ordinance 1856.” Which, of course, confused me. And which, of course, the opponents insisted was NOT going to confuse people (yeah, right), and that they thought the ordinance actually caused discrimination. (I found out this morning their group is called “Voters Against Special Rights” or something like that.)

Now, someone help me out here, because I just don’t get the following:

1.) How does an ordinance that prevents Person A from discriminating against Person B based on (a) how they dress and/or (b) what Person A thinks Person B’s sexual orientation is, and/or what Person B’s sexual orientation actually is grant “special rights” to anyone?

Granted, I understand that as a straight cis woman that no one’s ever likely not to rent to me because I am (or generally appear to be) straight or cis. But that’s a function of my straight cis privilege – that I get because “straight” and “cis” are the perceived “normal” categories. It has nothing to do with those categories actually having some inherent virtue more worthy of being respected. And, if someone did want to refuse to rent to me or serve me beer because I look straight or cis, this ordinance stops them from doing that too.

2.) This ordinance does not prevent people from having all the private animus they want against, say, transgendered folks, nor does it prevent them from privately expressing that animus. Non-het, non-cis people don’t suddenly get a life that’s all sunshine and roses just because you’re not allowed to say “get the fuck out of my restaurant, you queer.” Plenty of people are still going to treat them like complete shit. This is unfortunate crap and I wish it were not so, but it is. Furthermore, if you are one of the people who still wishes to treat non-het, non-cis people like complete crap, you are still free to do so on your own time (though I really wish you’d quit).

3.) Why exactly are men who never came up with the idea before suddenly going to say, “oh, hey, I can totally dress up as a woman and go into women’s bathrooms and peep at them or assault them or, hey, whatever!” Keeping in mind the amount of still-totally-legal private animus they will be drawing towards themselves from #2 above.

4.) We still live in a male-dominated society, where very little, if anything, seems to stop those men (I am overlooking that women also commit sexual assault because the “opposeds” did, and because the overwhelming majority of assaults period are still committed by men) who really really want to assault a woman in a public place. Can somebody show me a concrete example of a case in which knowing that a gay or trans self-expression could get him beaten up was the direct cause of a man deciding, “oh, hey, better not try to sneak into the women’s bathroom and assault them!”?

5.) This ordinance also prevents people from discriminating based on perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. Not only does it prevent, say, a restaurant owner from kicking out actual trans or gay people, it also prevents them from kicking out people whom they have randomly decided must be trans or gay.

I bring this up for three reasons: (1) every now and then (frequently), I get mistaken for a lesbian, (2) obviously by people whose gaydar is broken, which I can sympathize with even when I’m laughing my straight ass off because I have the brokingest gaydar that ever broke, and (3) I have an acquaintance who was permanently crippled after three teenagers beat him up one summer night on the grounds that he must be gay. He was not gay. They just arbitrarily decided he was, presumably to “justify” their assault.

My point being, tangentially, that even if you live in the magical land of Stupid Hatred, where it is non-het and non-cis people’s “fault” for having been born the way they are and if they want anything good out of this life they’ll straighten up (pun intended) and fly right goddammit, this ordinance protects the “good” “normal” het-and-cis people from moron landlords and bartenders who just can’t see I’m really straight and also really a man dammit. You’re protected even if you’re doing everything “right” – so WTF is the problem???

Maybe I am just a hippie pinko liberal socialist tree-hugger, but I don’t get it. ??

(Oh, and: the losing opposition blamed their loss on not having as many funds as the supporters. Because when your entire position is based on hate and fear-mongering, the only thing that could ever stop you is lack of funds. Totally.)

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So Here Is an Irony

07Nov09

A few days after my last post (in which I recapped the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, Part I, for your health and enjoyment), I was admitted to the hospital with primary insomnia of unknown cause. I had not slept for eight days and was seeing things. And by “things,” I mean “mostly centipedes.” I’d have preferred some statuesque British men, but I had no choice in the matter.

I spent a total of ten non-consecutive days in the hospital and now have $11,000 of medical bills I cannot pay because the condition for which I was admitted to the hospital, and my extended absence from work caused by being in the hospital, cost me my job.

That’s $11,000 AFTER INSURANCE, by the way.

I should point out that I worked as an attorney and had insurance through the mid-sized law firm at which I was an associate. By which I mean to point out that even the so-called “well-off” can be hosed in a hot second under our current “system.”

Less on healthcare, more on local politics, imminently.

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The Health Reform Bill, Part I: Private Insurance Reform

09Aug09

Because I have been uneducated, uninformed, and unimpressed by the media’s overall coverage of the health care reform battle, I’ve decided to read the bill myself. Like all bills introduced into Congress, the full text of the bill is available at http://thomas.loc.gov/. The health care reform bill is HR 3200, the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (“AACHA”), introduced by Rep. John Dingell (D-MI).

Here are some notes on the bill’s key points:

Title I: Reforms for Private Health Insurance

Title I of the AAHCA enacts various reforms to the current private insurance market. First, Title I allows insurers who provide health insurers through employers to keep doing so, provided the plans meet certain provisions.

First, the plan is not allowed to raise its rates arbitrarily after the public option goes into effect – if it does raise rates, it has to do so on all its insureds and according to stringent rules set out by the newly-created Health Choices Commissioner.

Private insurers will also have five years to rearrange the plans they offer so that they provide, at the very least, the “essential benefits package” described in the bill.

The above portions of Title I do not apply to plans that are limited to certain specific coverages, such as “hospital-only” or “prescription-only” supplemental plans.

Section 111 of Title I prohibits excluding insureds from coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Private insurers will no longer be able to refuse to pay medical bills based on the argument that the condition was “pre-existing.” Nor will they be able to refuse coverage altogether to persons who have “pre-existing conditions.”

(A “pre-existing condition” is basically anything you had before the day your health insurance went into effect, whether you knew you had it or not. For instance, cancer that is discovered six months after your policy begins is a “pre-existing condition” if it was probably there before you got your insurance. If a private insurer even suspects your condition was “pre-existing,” they will likely deny coverage – this is, in fact, the rule in many companies. This is true even if routine testing showed nothing. Even if you had no symptoms.

I wish I were exaggerating, but I have had too many cases with exactly this fact pattern. I am, in fact, understating the problem.)

Section 113 caps insurance premium costs and prevents insurers from charging different rates arbitrarily. Insurers may use factors such as age, average cost of health insurance in the immediate geographical area, and enrollment by families, but the extent to which they can change rates based on this information is limited.

Section 114 requires coverage for mental health on an equal level with coverage for “physical” health problems.

Section 115 requires insurers to establish comprehensive provider networks. This should reduce the costs to insureds who need specialists that are not in their insurance network, as insurers will be required to include necessary specialists when possible.

Section 121 requires all insurance plans, public, private or otherwise, to provide a minimum level of guaranteed benefits. These include payment for hospitalization, outpatient hospital and clinic services, including emergency room services, professional services by physicians and other health professionals, services, equipment and supplies related to the care prescribed by a physician or health professional, prescription medications, rehabilitative services, mental health and substance use disorder care, preventive care, maternity care, and well baby/well child care for children under 21 years of age.

This section also mandates that insurers provide a minimum of $5,000 care per person and $10,000 per family. The bill also prohibits cost-sharing for preventive and well baby/well child care Insurers are required to use copayments rather than coinsurance whenever possible.

Section 123 establishes a Health Benefits Advisory Committee, to include the Surgeon General. The committee will “recommend covered benefits and essential, enhanced, and premium plans.”

Sections 131 and 132 require private insurers to observe fair marketing practices and to provide fair grievance and appeals procedures. These procedures will include the basic requirements of due process, which are also guaranteed to all U.S. citizens under a public health option.

Sections 133 through 136 provide rules and regulations for transparency, timely payment of claims, and rules for coordination and subrogation of benefits. These rules are designed to prevent insurance companies from “baffling ‘em with bullshit,” so to speak. They prevent insurance companies from avoiding payment of benefits by tying up insureds in declaratory actions and other forms of litigation indefinitely.

(Full disclosure: a large part of my caseload involves declaratory actions and other forms of litigation designed to tie up insurance claims in the courts. Among other things, these claims postpone and often abrogate entirely the insurer’s obligation to pay. I have perhaps three of these cases for every one case subject to “tort reform” in recent years. You want to reform torts, tell your Congresscritter to pass this bill and stop insurance companies from baffling their insureds with lawsuits.)

Section 141 establishes the Health Choices Administration and its head, the Health Choices Commissioner, which will be responsible for overseeing both the new rules applicable to private insurers and the administration of the public health options. The HCA will include a Health Insurance Ombudsman (Section 144) to whom we can all complain.

Section 152 provides that “all health care and related services (including insurance coverage and public health activities) covered by this Act shall be provided without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services.” In other words, it prohibits discrimination in health care. The bill also provides whistleblower protection (Section 153) and collective bargaining protections (Section 154).

Section 161 requires insurers whose collections-to-expenditures ratio does not meet a certain limit (i.e., they do not spend as much as expected) to provide rebates to their insureds. It also prohibits recission of insurance except upon clear and convincing evidence of fraud, and requires independent third-party review of rescissions.

Currently, private insurers in most states have limited reasons they can use to rescind (take away) your health insurance. Fraud is included in all the states of which I know. In the states in which I practice, “material misrepresentation” is also included. A “material misrepresentation” is anything that, had the insurer known it when you applied, would have caused the insurer to make a different decision about your coverage. Needless to say, the only thing required to prove this is for the insurer to say under oath, “yeah, if we had known that, we’d have done it differently.”

This Section will eliminate a significant portion of my caseload and may put me out of a job. I do not care. Pass it. Because what insurers do now is unfair, unethical, and wrong.

Section 164 provides reinsurance for retirees whose Medicare benefits are not quite covering all their needs, under the same rules and regs as the rest of us are to get our insurance from now on.

Title II: The Public Health Insurance Option

Section 201 establishes the Health Insurance Exchange (“the Exchange”). The Exchange is basically a health-plan marketplace for individuals/families and employers: both private insurers and the federal government will offer various plans through the Exchange, and individuals, families, and employers can “shop” the various options and pick one that suits their needs and budget.

In order to be eligible to “shop” the Exchange, an individual or employer cannot already have (or provide) health insurance. By “health insurance,” the bill means a plan that meets the requirements laid out in Title I; Medicare; Medicaid; members of the armed forces and their dependents (including Tricare); or coverage under the VA. Individuals and their dependents who do not have any of the above are automatically qualified to “shop” the Exchange. No one is REQUIRED to pick the public option plan; if you find a private plan in the Exchange that you like better, you are free to pick it instead.

Employers are also included in the Exchange on a graded scale: the smallest employers (ten or fewer employees) can “shop” starting in the first year of the Exchange (2013), with larger employers having to wait until the second or third year to begin, depending upon their size. No such “size requirement” applies to individuals or families.

Section 203 outlines the various levels of “benefits packages” available in the Exchange. These are known, basically, as the “basic,” “enhanced,” “premium,” and “premium-plus” plans. The bills goes into some detail as to what goes in which plan, but all of them, including the “basic” plan, must cover the minimum required items set out in Section 121 (above). It also provides for little necessities like linguistically-appropriate and disability-appropriate care.

(Section 121, for the record, requires coverage of several things that are not in most private insurer’s “basic” plans currently, including maternity coverage and mental-health coverage. It is, therefore, already an improvement over the “free market” options.)

(Oh, and don’t bother making a snarky comment about “linguistically-appropriate care.” Instead, think good and hard about just why it is you think people who don’t speak English deserve to die.)

Section 208 provides for operation of State-based Exchanges at the option of a state or group of states. If the state or group of states gets approval to run an Exchange, it must do so under the same rules by which the federal government will run the Exchange.

Whew! This is a larger task than expected! Stay tuned for Part II, where we’ll begin with Section 221: The Public Option.

Dani is an attorney specializing in insurance defense. She is also disabled.

Filed under: chronic illness, law, politics   |  7 Comments

Fascist America: Are We There Yet?

09Aug09

Fascist America: Are We There Yet?

This does answer one question I’ve had for some time: if the loons on the Right really are as loony, ridiculous, nonsensical, illogical, and just plain silly as they appear to be, why are they still around??

I mean, birthers? “Teabagging”? “Obama’s death panel”? Are they SERIOUS?

I fear they are.

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